Thoughts on the policy stupidity of it. As noted, truckers already have plenty of incentives to get their trucks as fuel-efficient as possible. This also applies to CAFE (which in turn is equally stupid to the new light-bulb rules).
[Update a while later]
The single-entry bookkeeping of the Left. This is particularly the case with carbon mitigation, which the warm mongers always ignore, or fantasize that it will be less than the cost of changes in the climate.
The thing is market economies tend to have a myopic short term view of some long range trends. These often need to be corrected with government intervention. This is why there are things like construction codes and the like. People are not interested in savings that only show up after a decade. For all you know your company will be bankrupt by then. I do know the US uses a *lot* more fuel in transportation than the other Western societies and it does not benefit from increased GDP per capita by doing that. So I can understand the will to reduce transportation fuel use. In the long run NA production of fuel may make this problem inconsequential but it is still important to reduce fuel use today.
Then why did the heavy trucks go from about 0.62 gallons per ton per mile in 1960 to 0.33 gallons per ton per mile today, while increasing average speed and horsepower, prior to any fuel efficiency standards? The short answer is that it saved their customers money in operating costs, and thus boosted sales.
Looking at it in dollar terms, each efficiency improvement should pay for itself over the life of the vehicle, or it shouldn’t be done. This is the part of economics that liberals don’t get. If you add $20,000 to the cost of the truck but only get $10,000 in lifetime fuel savings, you’ve wasted $10,000. That waste went somewhere, with some going toward the fuel costs of making the epoxy and carbon fiber to lighten the vehicle, or to the added fuel costs of mining for stronger alloying elements, or into increased labor to produce a product that delivers the same service. You’ve either reduced your labor or fuel efficiency on the front end in a manner that won’t be fully recovered.
Putting it in a CO2 context, once your past the easy gains where you’re reaping windfall benefits from major improvements, and past the break even points where it’s a tossup, you enter the area where you’re emitting more CO2 on the front end production than the vehicle will save in operations over an older model that was built cheaper and more efficiently, whether it’s the emissions from the inputs or the emissions from all the extra workers commuting to build the same fleet of trucks.
An example of such an analysis was once done on some of the new hybrid cars whose components required expensive mining, and got shipped back and forth across the ocean several times (Nickel from Canada shipped to Japan, and then the vehicles shipped back, etc). Yes, you can go broke trying to save money, especially if the people doing the mandating and regulating only have degrees in law, environmental activism, and lesbian dance studies.
“…and it does not benefit from increased GDP per capita by doing that.”
You might want to review the rankings for GDP per capita around the globe. Take away oil rich nations, banking centers, and enclaves for the wealthy, and the only nation with higher GDP per capita is Australia. Why the Aussies rank so high, I do not know, but I expect special circumstances of some sort. We’re way ahead of other industrialized Western nations.
I think the Aussies – some of my favorite people – rank so high in GDP per capita is due to their massive mining operations.
Australia – think first world level legal, technological, moral and social system combined with staggering natural resources and a very small population.
“This is why there are things like construction codes and the like. ”
Construction codes are generally local. Though perhaps construction
codes for nuclear power plants could be federal- I don’t know.
“I do know the US uses a *lot* more fuel in transportation than the other Western societies and it does not benefit from increased GDP per capita by doing that. ”
But there are reasons for this. One reason is US has lower populations density.
In terms energy policy for US, cities should do more to increase population density- things like rent
control and restrictions on developments hinder doing this. High rise were not a government invention, they were market driven.
Another reason is US is simply much richer and one more easily travel.
So Canada is what you should compare US with in this regard. Though with Canada one realize something 80 to 90% of entire population is with 100 miles of US border. So one can’t think population density of entire country of entire province, and it’s very similar in terms population density and standard of living.
The thing is market economies tend to have a myopic short term view of some long range trends.
Fuel economy is one of those things where such alleged myopia wouldn’t matter. If a scheme is strictly better, then businesses will adopt. My view however is that most such cases of alleged myopia are actually due to flawed “optics” of the would-be regulators who don’t understand the industry well enough to determine what the costs and benefits of various would-be reforms are.